Critical Role, along with their partners Amazon Studios and Titmouse Animation, have announced the writing team for their upcoming animated series, The Legend of Vox Machina.
This Kickstarter-funded project broke records with 88,887 Kickstarter backers that pledged $11.39 million. Critical Role is a long-running livestream of a group of voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons, and The Legend of Vox Machina will be based on the early storylines of the first campaign.
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Who Are Critical Role?
Critical Role Productions LLC, was incorporated in 2015, with cast members Travis Willingham as CEO, Matthew Mercer as CCO, and Marisha Ray as creative director. Critical Role moved to their own studio space in 2018 and began creating more content and pushing it out on their Twitch and Youtube channels. They took over complete production responsibility of Critical Role and Talks Machina from Legendary Digital Networks in 2019.
On March 4, 2019 Critical Role launched the Kickstarter campaign to raise $750,000 for a 22 minute animated special. Within 24 hours the Kickstarter had earned $4.3 million. At the end of the 45 day Kickstarter campaign they had over $11 million. Instead of one 22 minute special Critical Role announced it would make a 10 episode animated series.
In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video acquired the streaming rights to The Legend of Vox Machina and announced that there will be 14 additional episodes for two 12 episode seasons. The upcoming animated series will star the Critical Role cast: Matthew Mercer, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Liam O’Brien, Ashley Johnson, and Taliesin Jaffe. The cast will be reprising their roles from campaign 1 as well as executive producing the series in order to guide the story and adapt their characters to animation.
Watch Critical Role’s video introducing the writing team for The Legends of Vox Machina below:
The Legend of Vox Machina Writing Team now includes:
- Brandon Auman (Star Wars Resistance, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) 2 time Emmy nominee, will also serve as executive producer on The Legend of Vox Machina
- Ashley Burch (Adventure Time) Emmy Award winner, who also guest starred on Critical Role in campaign 2
- Jennifer Muro (Star Wars Force of Destiny)
- Marc Bernadin (Castle Rock, Treadstone) WGA award winner for Castle Rock
- The writing team Chris “Doc” Wyatt and Kevin Burke (Star Wars Resistance, Marvel’s Rocket & Groot) Emmy nominees for Marvel’s Rocket & Groot
- Daniel Thomsen (Westworld, Once Upon A Time)
- Mae Catt (Transformers: Cyberverse, Marvel Rising)
- Eugene Son (Avengers Assemble) as the story editor
- And Meredith Kecskemety (Niko and the Sword of Light) as the writer’s assistant
Titmouse Animation studio co-founder Chris Prynoski (Big Mouth, Metalocalypse) will serve as executive producer and Sung Jin Ahn (Niko and the Sword) as supervising director.
The Legend of Vox Machina is the first project in a first look deal between Critical Role and Amazon Studios. There is currently no release date, but it is slated to stream late 2020 on Amazon Prime. All 88,887 Kickstarter backers will have access to the first season along with any other rewards promised during the Kickstarter campaign.
